Franklin Delano Roosevelt made many speeches that
have had an indelible imprint on the national consciousness. In his 1932
inauguration speech he derided the “falsity of material wealth as the standard
of success,” and in his 1936 Madison Square Garden address, he took on the
forces of corporate greed and far-right politics head-on:
For twelve
years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing
Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away.
Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge!
Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad
years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive
today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government
is best that is most indifferent.
For nearly
four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs
has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to
struggle with the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly,
speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war
profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as
a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized
money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never
before in all our history have these forces been so united against one
candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I
welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration
that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.
But FDR’s most famous line (more than the
“Infamy” of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor) was in the opening of his 1932
address:
So, first
of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is
fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed
efforts to convert retreat into advance.
It is unfortunate that today we do not have that
standard bearer of national conscious whose credibility is so unimpeachable
that he (or she) can expose the forces of hate and fear in the form of Donald
Trump and Republicans who grovel for the crumbs of his fanatical supporters
feasting on his rhetoric of racial paranoia for who they really are. Trump is
first and foremost a creature of money; his entire self-image is based on his
evaluation of his personal wealth. He has “his,” so the only explanation for
his attacks on minorities and dehumanizing and demonizing immigrants is his
contempt for people he believes he has no financial interest in associating
with. Such a man who thrives on hate and bigotry is always in the market for
fanatical cheering wherever he can find it, even from the lowest of the low of
whom he normally would not socialize with or even deign to tolerate in his
presence—unless, of course, they are attractive women he can’t keep his hands
off, even porn stars.
This mid-term election is clearly a referendum not on the insane policies of Trump, but on
this country’s tolerance for hate. Historically, white people seem to have a
greater tolerance for hate than one might expect from a “superior” race,
although many would say that is the reason for it. In that vein I am fascinated
by the continuing “cult” of Charles Manson, in which many people still prefer
to ignore the murders and focus on the “culture” of “love” that was supposedly
fostered. But as the recent documentary “Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost
Tapes” makes plain, this “love” was for “whites only” and to start a “race
war.” What wasn’t mentioned is the sexual rationalizations for this “war,” that
Manson’s “plan” was to draw all the eligible young white females (at least
locally) into his “family,” and all those black men allegedly hot for white female
flesh would become crazed from being deprived of this “outlet” for their sexual
“appetites” and start attacking white
people, thus starting this war (I’m not making this up—it’s right there on the
Wiki page for Manson’s plan for “helter skelter” ). Unfortunately, Manson was not
getting enough of the young white women off the streets quick enough, so in
order to get the race war going, he decided to start it himself, with the help
of the most “expendable” members of his “family.”
Of course, it isn’t all that surprising that the assumed
fears and paranoia of white women and the need to “protect” them is being used
to stir hate and racism in the base to swing the Trump/Republican way in the midterm
elections tomorrow. Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington
Post wrote that
What do
women want? President Donald Trump thinks he knows. “Women want security,”
Trump said about the caravan of migrants heading to the U.S. border with Mexico
during a rambling press conference on Thursday. “Women don’t want them in
our country. You look at what the women are looking for: They want to have
security.” He again proclaimed, without evidence, that the migrants were
“tough people,” and warned that if they throw rocks at troops he’s sending to
the border, “I say, consider it a rifle.”…Besides the patronizing assumption
that women need his protection, Trump’s message also echoed racist sentiments
of America’s past that minorities were out to rape white women.
But The New
York Times tells us that many white women do feel they need “protection” from the raping and pillaging hordes
coming across the border:
Yet days before the midterm elections, women are
streaming into the president’s campaign events wearing bedazzled hats and
T-shirts proclaiming Mr. Trump’s greatness. In between the selections from the
musical “Cats,” the Celine Dion ballads and the Elton John classics that fill
out the president’s campaign soundtrack, they hoist hot-pink “Women for Trump”
signs as they balance babies on their hips. And they scoff at the suggestion
that Mr. Trump—who has been accused of sexual assault and boasted graphically
that he could do “anything” with women—has a problem with them….But it is their
visceral fear of immigrants and raw anger about changes in cultural mores…that
appear to be driving the intensity of their support for the president… Mr.
Trump has not tempered his tone, instead betting that his fear-based appeals
will resonate with women. “Border security is very much a woman’s issue,” Mr.
Trump said on Saturday afternoon in Belgrade, Mont. “Women want security. They
don’t want that caravan.”…That is certainly the case for Kristin Sellers, 48,
of Pace, Fla., who said she was “anxious as hell” about the migrants, and
trusted Mr. Trump to keep them out.
But these far-right hate
fanatics are not the only “problem”; so-called “liberal” women and feminists
are also guilty of harboring the ugliest of stereotypes, particularly when it
comes to Hispanic males. I once encountered this when I was walking down an
aisle in a Seattle QFC; I noticed peripherally that a young white female was
glaring at me coming from the opposite direction. I just kept walking keeping
my head straight, but she nearly ran into me and when I was forced to look at
her directly she sneered “Looking at my boobs?” I let out a sigh and retorted
“No, I’m looking at a fucking Boob.” To be blunt, I haven’t had time for any
woman for years, but self-involved, bigoted white women especially.
I dug-up a story in an obscure “self-love”
website written by a white woman and self-proclaimed feminist named Ginger
Stickney, whose “partner” was Hispanic. She expressed her fear that her son—by
default “Hispanic”—would be a target of racist stereotypes, especially by other
white women:
After all,
these women were talking about men like my son. Girls in my classroom warned
each other about Mexican men. The men leered at them, they claimed. These
stories did more than shove people into stereotypes. They created an idea of
the over-sexual brown man. And, of course, I’ve heard these same stories about
black men.
When we as
white women share these stories of being checked out and catcalled by men of
color, we are creating a culture in which these men easily become seen as
sexual predators. I am as guilty as my friends, which is why I committed to
stopping this line of thinking a couple of months ago. Nobody deserves to be
unfairly cast into any role. These stories and practices contribute to an image
of lechery. How much of a step is it to imagine men of color unable to control
those impulses?
It is
interesting to note that FBI arrest statistics (not actual convictions) on rape have doubled since 2013,
but not because incidents of rape is on the rise, but because the definition of
“rape” was politically-driven to include not just “forcible rape,” but revised to include
just about anything “sexual” without “consent.” Anything from “slight
penetration”—however that is defined—to any
action that may lead to unwanted
sexual interaction is now included in the definition of “rape.” Aggravated assault,
by the way, still accounts for ¾ of all violent crime arrests, while homicide arrests
until the 2013 changes occurred at about the same number as rapes. However, even with the expanded definition, it is about 1-in-7,000 women who make rape accusations, which in turn result in arrests--which brings to mind the claim that one-in-three college women are raped and the frequent claim by the more extreme gender advocates that there is a "culture" and "epidemic" of rape in this country. What is
interesting about the new guidelines is that under the category of arrests by “ethnicity”—meaning
“Hispanic” and everyone else, although by “ethnicity” any “race” is included—Hispanic
rates were more affected by inclusion of what had previously been categorized
as “sexual offenses” other than rape. As suggested before, this may be more due
to the fact that women (or rather, white women) are more prone to see Hispanic males
as “sexual predators” and be predisposed to view any encounter in that light,
whether justified or not.
Take for instance the case of one Luis Garcia. In April, 2009 Garcia was charged
in Pierce County in the state of Washington with rape in the first degree and
assault in the second degree, which was alleged to have occurred in August
2000. In 2011 he was arrested and confined in jail for 300 days. In 2012 the
state filed an amended complaint charging Garcia with a single count of assault
in the first degree with a fictitious commission date (August 2006). Garcia was
persuaded by his attorney to enter a plea and was sentenced to 83 months of
confinement. He was released in February 2016, the case against him dismissed
with prejudice. Garcia had withdrawn his guilty plea in 2013, claiming that he
had not made a knowing and intelligent decision, and was not advised of his
waiver if the statute of limitations had passed, and his constitutional rights
were violated. In fact the trial court lacked the authority to enter a judgment
and to sentence since the statute of limitations had expired. An appellate court
vacated the conviction with prejudice, but the state attempted to retry him on
the original charges. After his new attorney filed a motion to dismiss, the
state also did so based on the fact that the “victim” had admitted that she had not been raped, but was (allegedly) assaulted by a
boyfriend. The alleged victim was also “deceased.” Thus is how fanatical gender advocates in the
criminal justice system are when they seek to prove that sexual crimes are
“epidemic”—knowingly keeping a man in prison not only unjustly but with total
disregard for due process. That he was “Hispanic” was just “coincidental.”
Stickney bemoans the fact that feminists have
done much to stoke this fear-based stereotyping of Hispanic males—who
naturally compose that “caravan” of "rapists," "killers" and "terrorists." It was two white feminist “researchers” who,
after all, supplied the “rapists” claim that Trump used during his campaign. As
I pointed out back then, illegal immigrant women were liable to say anything
that would “please” their questioners in the hope of receiving preferential
treatment, and furthermore it wasn’t the male immigrants they were traveling
with crossing the border that they necessarily were accusing. The U.S.
military’s own assessment of the threat to national security posed by the
caravan is somewhat less frightful than Trump and Jeff Sessions’ assessment. Besides
no evidence of “criminals” and “terrorists” in their ranks, only a small
percentage are expected to reach the border (just over a 1,000)—half of them
children, or in Sessions’ feverish mind, soon-to-be gang members—to face-off
against 5,000 soldiers. According to the Washington
Post, “The assessment also indicates military planners are concerned about
the presence of ‘unregulated armed militia’ groups showing up at the border in
areas where U.S. troops will operate.”
What makes this all the more absurd is—besides
the patently racist refugee policy that ignores the U.S.’ own historical role
in the social and economic subversion of Central America—is that most Hispanics
are “invisible” to white America until it is time to find a scapegoat or
something to focus their hate on. Hate makes some people feel “good.” But not
all immigrants are hated, of course. Included in that group is the one-in-six
residents of Indian heritage who are in the country illegally, many of them
concealed by Indian-owned businesses and franchises; Chinese “parachute”
children landing in small town Iowa to “revitalize” dead communities (or is it
to kick the asses of lazy students at otherwise all-white schools into gear?),
and Russian “birth tourists,” like those bikini-clad women proudly displaying
their bulging bellies on the beaches of Miami. Those Russians are not here to
work and contribute to the economy like Hispanic immigrants; they hope that
their U.S.-born kids can partake in the benefits of being born here whenever
they feel like it without the responsibilities of being a U.S. citizen.
Thus ignorance and hypocrisy is part of the stew
of hate, nativism and xenophobia. There are problems with the immigration
system, but most of it has to do with attempts to racialize who gets to be
allowed legal entry, particularly from Latin America even though past U.S.
policy toward the region makes it appear that this country merely regarded it as its own “backyard.”
But some have noted that what is actually occurring is that Trump is paying the
price for ignoring Latin America, and as usual instead of changing course he is
doubling down. Why has he done this? Likely because he has few business or
financial interests in the region, plus he hasn’t been known to “socialize”
with any Hispanics no matter what their level of success is, so there is no one
he is afraid of offending. But Trump “personalizing” every issue isn’t news;
what is “news” is that he threatens the civil rights of every Hispanic in this
country, even those who are in every way an American.
This is what this election is about. Trump and his supporters in the media, white
women like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, are banking on white people’s
acceptance of dehumanization and demonization of a whole group of people simply
because they hate them and fear them. This election will tell us how much nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror
which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance is the
guiding principle in the minds of the large
majority of white people who Republicans are banking on. It is not a
question if the majority of whites
will vote on the basis of ignorance and prejudice and fear and paranoia and hypocrisy,
but if it is big enough a majority to maintain control of Congress.
